I decided to write this because I thought my experience could be an interesting or useful data point, in particular for understanding the results of Good Heart Week: Extending the Experiment. I happened to discover LessWrong just before April 1st. Initially, it captured my attention through the UI design—I have...
Whenever I need to create an account on some platform I've not used before, I'm almost always[1] faced with a dilemma regarding my public username. I can simply use one that I already use elsewhere or I can come up with a new, unique one. Both, in my view, have...
I decided to write this because I thought my experience could be an interesting or useful data point, in particular for understanding the results of Good Heart Week: Extending the Experiment.
I happened to discover LessWrong just before April 1st. Initially, it captured my attention through the UI design—I have an impression that many platforms focused on thinking itself, scientific research, and similar topics have a really outdated look that demotivates me from interacting with them (which itself is likely to be caused by the fact that I have to interact with some other, unrelated platforms with outdated looks); but LessWrong's is quite modern, while still retaining simplicity that allows one to focus... (read 847 more words →)
It appears that there is a typo in the first sentence:
This is a new FAQ written LessWrong 2.0.
I would expect it to read something like "This is a new FAQ written for LessWrong 2.0." instead.
I'll mention a few YouTube channels that have quite a large following, but maybe some people aren't aware of them:
There are also many math channels mentioned in A Layman’s Guide to Recreational Mathematics Videos.
I agree that deniability from a technical perspective (such as absence of a direct link from the account on one platform to the account on the other platform and vice versa) doesn't necessarily make it much harder to identify that it's the same person. On the other hand, even if the username, profile picture, etc. are exactly the same, one needs to be careful about associating the accounts too quickly, especially in the case of some common/simple username—it could just be a coincidence.
It seems that things like behavior and writing style are more important to keep similar or distinct—it would take a little while longer to pick them up for an outside observer, but they seem to be much more reliable signals for linking accounts; even if the user in question denies that both accounts belong to them, I think it's more likely that the observer just wouldn't believe them if they know the user's writing style.
Who are you trying to confuse into keeping your identities separate?
This is a good question, I don't really have a specific threat model in mind. Obviously, I want "the bad guys" to know as little about me as possible, but I can't seem to easily define who they are and how I would identify someone as belonging to them before I had a chance to talk with that someone or at least observe their behavior for a while. Regarding the quiz idea in my question, them having similar interests (or knowing mine) doesn't guarantee that they aren't part of "the bad guys" either.
Whenever I need to create an account on some platform I've not used before, I'm almost always[1] faced with a dilemma regarding my public username. I can simply use one that I already use elsewhere or I can come up with a new, unique one.
Both, in my view, have advantages and disadvantages:
Rationalization is probably the one that was the most enlightening. I tend to sometimes (knowingly) think in that way, but didn't necessarily view it as a negative thing (and didn't know the term) before reading the tag description here. Confirmation Bias seems like it's related to (or could be a part of) rationalization as well. Another one that stood out was Akrasia.
These are the ones that stood out to me initially. Looking now at the Concepts page again, I feel like I should at some point check out all of the terms at least by hovering over them, because there are a lot of ones that look interesting or may have a deeper meaning than they might seem to at first sight.